A personal device, such as a mobile phone, media player, or tablet computer, can be used to consume content while a user of the device is travelling. The content can include aural content, such as music and audio books, or it may be rich multimedia content, such as movies, video games, and the like. Personal devices, while often mobile and efficient, may have limited functionality and content consumption capabilities, including small or low resolution displays, low quality speakers, and limited computing power. Purpose-built media devices, such as televisions, stereos, video game systems, and desktop computers provide rich content consumption experiences. The media devices can have large high definition displays, high fidelity audio processing equipment and speakers, and large amounts of computing power.
Conventionally, if a user is viewing or listening to content via a personal device, such as a mobile phone, and wants to instead consume the content on an alternate media device, the user may have to manually load the content for playback on the alternate media device, and using the alternate media device, locate the point from which to resume playback of the content based on a current play position on the personal device (e.g., by fast forwarding playback of the content on the media device until the desired play position is reached). Some personal devices allow a user to manually instruct a given personal device playing back content to stream the content to another media device, which may then output the content to the user. For example, a user listening to music via a suitably equipped MP3 player may instruct the MP3 player to stream the music to a home stereo system for output on the speakers of the stereo. In such systems the execution and playback of the content continues to originate from the personal device, and the user needs to manually instruct the personal device at the desired time of playback to stream the content to the alternate media device.